It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow, And earthquake and thunder. The bars of the springs below: The beard and the hair Seen through the torrent's sweep, To the brink of the Dorian deep. “Oh, save me! Oh, guide me! And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair! The loud Ocean heard, To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer; And under the water The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam; Behind her descended Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream: Like a gloomy stain On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind, As an eagle pursuing A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind. VOL. III. 4 Under the bowers Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones; Of the weltering floods, Which amid the streams Weave a network of coloured light; Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam, And up through the rifts Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home. And now from their fountains In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks, Like friends once parted Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks. At sunrise they leap From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill; Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel; And at night they sleep Beneath the Ortygian shore; Like spirits that lie In the azure sky When they love but live no more. SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA. SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, If with mists of evening dew Thou dost nourish these young flowers Fairest children of the hours, HYMN OF APOLLO. THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie, Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their Mother, the gray Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone. Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome, I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam; My footsteps pave the clouds with fire; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare. The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray I feed the clouds, the rainbows, and the flowers, With their ethereal colours; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers Are cinctured with my power as with a robe; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine Are portions of one power, which is mine. I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, For grief that I depart they weep and frown: I am the eye with which the Universe All prophecy, all medicine are mine, HYMN OF PAN. FROM the forests and highlands We come, we come; Where loud waves are dumb Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes, |